Chinatown Students Conduct Thorough Surveys of SFMTA Bus Stops

One of the central criticisms of Muni’s objective to consolidate bus stops is that it hasn’t conducted thorough demographic analysis of the people who use each stop, particularly seniors and the disabled. Rather than rely solely on the distance between stops and the incline of the streets, say critics, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) should make nuanced decisions about each stop based on the amenities near the stops and the people who use them.

But one community group isn’t waiting on the SFMTA to do the legwork.

Staff at the Chinatown Community Development Center (CCDC) and approximately twenty students with clipboards and measuring tape analyzed 34 bus stops in Chinatown, an initiative the group hopes will be a model adopted by other neighborhood groups and the SFMTA itself. The students who conducted the surveys are part of CCDC’s Youth for SROs Leadership Empowerment program, most of them children of recent immigrants to the United States.

"We’re trying to offer a community perspective of how people use a bus stop," said CCDC’s Deland Chan, who coordinated the surveys with Judy Kuang. "We’re trying to capture exactly the value of a bus stop, not in terms of the spacing, but in terms of its importance to community uses, in terms of who uses a bus stop and what the people think they would like to improve with the transit system they encounter on a daily basis."

As part of the rationale for the survey, CCDC said bus stop spacing should be part of the larger goal of facilitating transit as an attractive alternative to driving, integrating design features that improve public health and safety, and ensuring that existing transit services complement and encourage travel by foot.

"Because the MTA do not include the demographic and the land use data, we are collecting all the data," said Bill Yu, a high school senior. Yu said that without looking at neighborhood amenities, a bus stop placement policy would fall short of community needs. "I think this is really helpful for the community, especially the Chinatown neighborhoods. The people who live here need bus stops because they need to take the bus to buy food and other stuff for their basic needs."

To come up with the bus stop scorecard categories, CCDC worked with the Community Tenants Association (CTA) and the Adopt-an-Alleyway (AAA) Youth Cabinet, both active in Chinatown’s planning and transportation policy issues. Surveyors noted whether stops had shelters, measured the dimensions of them if they did, measured sidewalk widths, and identified nearby community amenities, such as educational facilities, community institutions, non-profits, senior centers, senior facilities, and medical facilities. They researched SFMTA ridership volumes at the bus stops and noted whether they were active transfer points.

The students also conducted interviews with bus riders throughout the survey process, asking why they chose a particular bus stop and what they thought were the most pressing problems for Chinatown bus stops.

CCDC created a database of land uses around bus stops and the quality of rider experience at the bus stops, which Chan said the group hopes will assist in providing further nuance to the SFMTA’s bus stop spacing policy and inform decisions on what stops are most in need of upgrades. CCDC will share the data and their analysis of it with the CTA and AAA in the next few weeks, before finalizing a list of priority improvements to bring to the SFMTA shortly thereafter.

"We can’t really wait for the city to do things, so in many ways we’re taking this on proactively to collect the data," said Chan. "We’re going to use this to educate our community in tenants’ meetings and focus groups to report back on what our results have been."

Chan added, "This could become a process that other community groups might want to model if they want to do a more comprehensive survey of the bus stops."

A Selection of the Survey Results

Beyond the usual concerns about Muni service, such as long waits, overcrowded buses and skipped stops, Chan said the most common complaints about bus stops were the lack of NextMuni real-time data screens, shelters without seats and a paucity of nearby garbage cans.

Among the solutions offered by interviewees, Chan said there was support for improving the boarding experience and for simple design solutions, such as painted footprints on the sidewalk to encourage people to queue before the bus arrives.

The students also looked for stops where there was a mismatch between the rider amenities offered and the importance of the stop, based both on the concentration of major destinations and on ridership volume.

Awesome work. I hope they make the data available online. I’d like to see their metric and maybe get a group together to get the rest of North Beach surveyed. But Chinatown is a major player, and to see them taking bull by the horns is great.

Nat Ford and the SFMTA will only continue to fail this city.

Virginia Lee

Two thumbs up for the students and the CDCC. Way to take ownership of “your” public transit system.

Eric Gonzalez

Can they invest some time on figuring out how to make people make single file line to board 30&45 buses at Stevenson and 3rd? I mean seriously it is a nuisance.

Nick

This appears to be another example of the MTA abdicating their responsibility. No where in their $800 million dollar budget could they pay someone to do this?

The SFBC has to report potholes for them. SPUR makes budget reccomendations. And CCDC analyzes their transit effectiveness.

I read on SF Weekly that Nat Ford doesn’t read blogs. That’s sounds about right. It reminds me of high school when the students wanted to learn, but the teachers and administrator’s didn’t want to teach.

ZA

Rock that community democracy! Yes!

Andy Chow

You make people line up by putting railings like they do in theme parks. It is interesting that in some places people form a line by themselves, but not in other places.

Half the time when people get on the bus’s its all push and shove. What ever happened to people being polite?

My hats off to this kids for taking the time and dedication to collect this data. I can only imagine how much they had to put up with from alot of these rude people.

Mike

It’s great to see kids involved in transit.
It’s also a fact that there are way too many stops in this town and for that reason we are among the SLOWEST transit lines in the country. No wonder people would rather drive.

Stop consolidation is a no-brainer. It will speed up rides and make Muni better.

Diana

Bill Yu is an incredible asset to SF community development. He’ll be a super star to watch out for in the coming years!

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

There’s a reason Muni’s 21-Hayes still stops twice on the block between Central and Masonic Avenues — the owner of the cafe on the corner of Central demands it. The SFMTA announced last week that it will ditch plans to remove the inbound bus stop at Central, after a persistent protest campaign by the owner […]

Muni’s notoriously sluggish 30-Stockton line is finally set to get some upgrades that will give buses higher priority on streets through the dense neighborhoods of Union Square, Chinatown, North Beach, and near Fisherman’s Wharf. The plans, part of the SFMTA’s “Muni Forward” program, include transit-only lanes, bus bulb-outs and boarding islands, transit signal priority, and […]

Central Subway Chinatown station. Graphic: SFMTA Now that the Central Subway has received its Record Of Decision (ROD) from the Federal Transit Administration, advocates are pressing the MTA to start planning for the subway’s extension into North Beach and beyond. The Central Subway is considered phase two of the T-Third Muni Metro line, extending that […]

San Francisco’s parklet revolution has broadened the possibilities for how curb space can be used. Now, city planners in SF and the East Bay are taking the idea in a new direction: using temporary sidewalk extensions to make transit stops more efficient and attractive. Three different names for the concept have emerged from planners at three institutions where it […]

Chinatown’s crowded sidewalks, unsafe crosswalks and poor pedestrian signage are not likely to be among the endearing physical characteristic featured in any tourist brochure. Yet in a recent study — the San Francisco Chinatown Pedestrian Safety Needs Assessment [pdf] and Safety Plan [pdf] conducted by the Chinatown Community Development Center (CCDC) — those issues were […]